Freelance Journalist | Avid Gamer

PAX 2013: Samurai Gunn preview

Samurai Gunn is one of the simplest games I’ve played at PAX; it’s also one of the most fun.

The demo that I played featured four-player, first to ten kills death-matches followed by a sudden-death showdown. It’s a brawler that requires extremely fast reflexes, and I must say that my poor PAX pupils were struggling to keep up after a long day on the show floor. I had my ass handed to me in four straight-matches, but it was fun as hell.

You play as a speedy samurai who can leap around the screen and slice in the cardinal directions with a katana. You can also fire a gun three times per life, but the bullets move slow enough that they can be reflected out of mid-air by an opponents sword strike.

Well, they were reflected back at me quite frequently anyways. I found myself running into bullets the moment I respawned more often than I landed any shots of my own.

Every time a kill occurs on the screen, some black letterboxes highlight the short freeze-frame of the moment, and the brief moments of darkness for the other players can cause moments of short-lived tension that create an interesting flow to each match.

It definitely reminded me of the cheesy samurai showdowns you see in old Japanese movies, and the reminder is a welcome one.

Teknopants say that Samurai Gunn is slated to launch on PC later this year, but it’s the Vita and PS4 2014 release-window that has me most eager to play it. Look forward to making a boring night at home with friends very lively one on the couch with Samurai Gunn.